This elegantly-printed volume, published in England, though by an American author, has for its subject four distinct lines of inquiry; two of these—the validity of a theory which originated in this country a few years ago, that Bacon, Lord Verulam, really wrote the plays known as Shakspere’s; and, secondly, the extent of Shakspere’s legal knowledge—though carried through the work, are subordinate to the other two—the anti-democratic tone of the dramatist and the fact that he was a Catholic. These are the real issues of the book. Mr. Wilkes holds that Shakspere should not exert the influence in this country that he does in England, and he arraigns him at the bar of American public opinion to answer the indictment that he is always a strenuous upholder of royal authority, an advocate of the privileges of the nobility, regarding them as far removed above the ignobile vulgus, for whom on all occasions the poet manifests the utmost contempt. That a work teeming with constant lessons of this character is no fit guide for Americans he makes the real argument of his book. The second count is apparently intended to be no less damaging. Shakspere was a Catholic, and as such should exercise no influence on a Protestant community. His influence in England for three hundred years has not apparently won that country back to Catholicity, and the United States are probably as safe. Still, it may serve for a new agitation to get up a cry: “No Shakspere in the public schools!”
That Mr. Wilkes considers it a danger is seen by the fact that he uses toward Catholics every vile nickname drawn from the slums by religious hate to degrade us in the eyes of our fellow-men. Yet surely a Shaksperean scholar should not need reminding that to rob one of his good name is worse than stealing his purse, oft-times as bad as taking his life. Not only this, but he more than once represents the Catholic Church as actuated by a hatred of intense fury against the Jews, as an earnest upholder of the unlawful claims of aristocracy, as an enemy of popular rights, and as an excuser of perjury. While thus under a strong anti-Catholic bias or prejudice—stronger even than he at all conceives—he has attempted to understand Catholic terms and usages, and to enter into that world which to Protestants seems so strange and inconceivable—the world of Catholic thought.
The question as to the religious convictions of Shakspere is not a new one. No Catholic has ever read the great dramatist without feeling that he was strangely lacking in the usual anti-Catholic element, even if he did not impress him as often Catholic in thought.
Catholic writers in English periodicals, such as the Rambler and others, had already claimed Shakspere as a Catholic. All evidence, extrinsic and intrinsic, seems to sustain the position. His family belonged to the gentry on the father’s and mother’s side, and on both sides had adhered to Catholicity after the change of religion in England. The will of his maternal grandfather, Robert Arden, who died in 1556, is distinctly Catholic: “I bequeath my soul to Almighty God, and to our Blessed Lady St. Mary, and to all the holy company of heaven.” Of his father there is still extant a Testament of the Soul—not, as Mr. Wilkes supposes, a form drawn up by some chaplain of the family, but that Testamentum Animæ Christianæ which, in Latin and the vernacular, has for centuries been found in Catholic devotional manuals, and the copying of which, as a kind of formal act, has been maintained in many families—certainly was in the family of the present writer down to the nineteenth century. Shakspere’s father, too, was fined for non-attendance at the established church. So far as the families of his parents were concerned, he was evidently Catholic, and must in childhood have been familiar with the thoughts and language of English Catholics. How far in mature age he retained the impressions of youth, or how faithful he may have been to the teachings of his religion, we have no means of judging. The lightness with which moral obligations lay on him, his career as a wild but gifted man, give little ground for supposing him to have practised the religion he may still have professed.
In his dramas Shakspere constantly uses Catholic terms, speaks of Catholic clergy, religious of both sexes, rites and ceremonies with respect, and in many cases turns his ridicule upon the new order of clergy in England. The Shaksperes and Ardens had both held office under the Tudor kings, and the dramatist shows the utmost zeal for royal power as against the Pope. To a Catholic, now, this gives his position at once. His life was not a regular one; and he could scarcely, in those days of persecution, have been a firm, consistent, practical Catholic, although he clung to the faith, never abjured it, and had no liking for any of the new forms. His Bible reading was in the Protestant versions of the day, not in the Rheims and Douay, of which no influence has ever been detected in his plays. That he died a good Catholic needs proof; but Mr. Wilkes’ ideas of the meaning of the term are vague, since he tells us that Henry VIII. died a good Catholic.
The fact that Shakspere makes his characters—most of whom are Catholics in time or country—speak as Catholics is really no proof of his own Catholicity, any more than Longfellow’s almost constant correctness in his use of Catholic terms and familiarity with Catholic thought is proof that he is a Catholic. The fact is, we admit, suspicious; for during centuries Protestant writers seem to have made it a point to display the most intense ignorance of Catholic terms, usages, rites, and ceremonies, and equally a point to insist on talking about what they vaunt their ignorance of. But, going back to Shakspere’s time, we must bear in mind that the new religion had not yet taken any hold on the people at large; that the only religious terms and expressions that conveyed any definite ideas to their minds were those of the old faith sanctioned by the usage of centuries, and that the terms introduced by the various classes of reformers were diverse, new, strange, and, to the people, a mere ridiculous jargon. The coinage of a new religious vocabulary took time and skill. It was no easy task to shape Bible translation so as to avoid old ideas and thoughts. This new jargon rose to be a language when the King James Bible was imposed on the people after the Restoration. Though long vaunted as a well of English undefiled, philologists now admit that it is the language of no period of English history, of no district of English soil; it was a hash made to meet the pressing want, with obsolete words, terms drawn from every county of England, and new-coined expressions, all forced into the service so as to supply the English people with a new vocabulary of religious thought.
To convey religious ideas in Shakspere’s time, the readiest words were those familiar to the people. The dramatist employs them with no regard to the country or time. The pagan Hamlet refers to the Blessed Sacrament, Extreme Unction, the Mass, and Office for the Dead; they talk of confession and beads in the Comedy of Errors; of indulgences in the Tempest, and even in Troilus and Cressida; of fasting days in Pericles and Coriolanus; and christening is spoken of in Titus Andronicus. The anachronisms were apparently not noticed in his time, nor taken into account.
The system had not been adopted of entirely ignoring Catholic terms; there were no others, and Shakspere used what he had. One word seems to be avoided. The Mass is introduced only like Moore’s “neat little Testament, just kept to swear by.” It occurs only in the form of an oath, except in one instance, to which Mr. Wilkes devotes a chapter. Juliet, going to her confessor, asks:
“Are you at leisure, holy father, now,
Or shall I come to you at evening Mass?”